China Unveils 15th Five-Year Plan for Intellectual Property Framework

China's State Council has officially issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for Intellectual Property Protection and Utilization, outlining strategic goals for the 2026–2030 period with a long-term vision toward 2035. The plan establishes four main policy tasks and 12 special initiatives, focusing on strengthening legal frameworks, boosting commercial application for new quality productive forces, and deepening international cooperation. Notably, the roadmap prioritizes establishing IP regulations for emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence, algorithm design, platform business models, and data elements.

《知识产权保护和运用“十五五”规划》的发布为中国未来五年的知识产权保护与市场化运用制定了明确蓝图。随着人工智能和数字经济的飞速发展，明确AI生成物、数据要素和算法等新兴领域的产权规则，将对国内外企业的创新投资与知识产权合规产生深远影响。

China's State Council has published the 15th Five-Year Plan for Intellectual Property Protection and Utilization, setting out a comprehensive national strategy to modernize the country's IP system for the 2026–2030 policy cycle, according to official circulars issued by the central government and reports by state media outlets Xinhua and People's Daily. The policy document establishes milestone objectives for 2030, targeting decisive progress toward making China a recognized intellectual property powerhouse. Under the blueprint, China aims to strengthen judicial and administrative IP protection, enhance the market valuation of IP assets, and streamline public services. Looking ahead to 2035, the plan envisions China's overall IP competitiveness ranking among the top globally, backed by a fully developed legal framework. To achieve these long-term goals, the State Council outlined four central tasks: optimizing the legal protection environment to support comprehensive innovation, improving IP conversion efficiency to foster new quality productive forces, building an efficient integrated administrative governance system, and deepening international IP governance and cooperation to serve high-level opening up. A prominent feature of the plan is its tailored focus on establishing rules for emerging technologies and digital economy sectors. The document directs authorities to develop specialized protection frameworks for artificial intelligence-generated content, algorithm design, platform economy models, and data IP rights. It also calls for studying open-source IP license rules to support domestic development communities, while refining IP rules in specialized areas such as traditional Chinese medicine, space station operations, commercial secrets, and biological genetic resources. To drive implementation, the plan establishes 12 special projects, including specialized initiatives for strategic emerging industries, mutual empowerment between IP and artificial intelligence, regional IP services, and Belt and Road IP cooperation. The National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) will lead overall coordination, working alongside relevant departments to formulate annual implementation blueprints and conduct ongoing monitoring.